Wherever Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) meets displaced women and girls, some will be carrying pregnancies due to rape. Testimonies of rape and other forms of sexual violence are common in the dedicated “women’s shelter” on the MV Aquarius, a search and rescue ship operated by SOS Méditerranée with medical support from MSF.

Widespread and targeted attacks against the Rohingya community by Myanmar authorities starting in August 2017 drove nearly 700,000 refugees into Bangladesh over the past six months. Even today, people continue to cross the border seeking safety. New arrivals describe ongoing violence and arrests in villages across Myanmar’s Rakhine state, where few Rohingya remain.

MSF has now treated more than 4,000 people for diphtheria since December 2017, according to Carla Pla, project medical director for an MSF hospital in Cox's Bazar, in Bangladesh. Nearly 700,000 Rohingya refugees are living in camps in this area.

Since August 25, 2017, nearly 700,000 Rohingya have fled targeted violence and persecution in Myanmar to take refuge in makeshift shelters in camps in Bangladesh. Now they are threatened by the approaching monsoon season.

In three weeks, MSF constructed a new hospital in Tasnimarkhola camp, Bangladesh, with an emergency room, an intensive care unit, a pharmacy and sterilization unit. In it's first month of operation, MSF staff admitted 220 patients, more than half of them suffering from measles.

MSF teams in Bangladesh are treating survivors of sexual violence as part of their response to the Rohingya refugee crisis. Midwife Aerlyn Pfeil helped set up the program. Here, she answers questions about the challenges to treating these patients, MSF's approach, and what she will remember about the survivors she met in Bangladesh.